The treatment and handling of hazardous water-based wastes are matters of paramount concern to environmentalists and residents of many communities. The old practice of simply dumping wastes in rivers and streams is no longer tolerable. Both the federal government and local authorities in recent years have enacted rules and regulations designed to prevent pollution of our environment in order to protect residents of various communities from harmful exposure to hazardous substances generated from some industrial operations. In response to such regulations, and to alleviate the concerns of the residents, most industries have demonstrated concern with waste disposal problems and practices. Some industries have directed their efforts to maximizing the efficiency of their processes and operations so as to minimize the waste discharge to the atmosphere. Others have resorted to the treatment of the wastes, which in some cases are voluminous, in order to comply with governmental and local regulations, all at significant added costs to the manufacturers, and ultimately, the consumers.
One type of waste which is generated in large volumes is the waste produced during photographic processes and similar operations. These wastes are generated by numerous institutions and photographic processing plants and developers. The prevailing current practice of disposing such wastes is to charge them into 55-gallon waste drums as they are generated, and as each drum is filled with waste, haul the drum away to some waste dump site where the waste is simply placed in a landfill. The waste treatment methods which are now available for such wastes are obviously unsatisfactory, and in fact hazardous, since they result in significant environmental pollution. This is neither satisfactory from regulatory point of view, nor healthy or acceptable to environmentalists and community residents. Therefore, there is a dire need for a method for disposal or reduction of such wastes and eliminating or reducing environmental pollution.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a method for the treatment of wastes in order to virtually eliminate or effectively reduce environmental pollution.
It is also an object of this invention to provide a method of treatment of wastes whereby the waste volume is substantially reduced so as to minimize the amount of waste which must be dumped.
It is a further object of the present invention to treat large volumes of wastes in order to reduce the amount of waste without harmful discharge of hazardous substances to the environment.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a method of treatment of wastes generated as a result of photographic and similar operations whereby the waste volume may be reduced by as much as about 90 percent without harmful discharge of hazardous substances to the environment.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide an apparatus which is uniquely designed and particularly suited for treatment of wastes, especially photographic wastes, so as to substantially reduce the volume of waste to be dumped, without harmful discharge of hazardous substances to the environment.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be appreciated from the following detailed description of the invention with further reference to the accompanying drawings.